The Lima Declaration

Representatives of international volunteer cooperation organisations and volunteer-involving organisations from around the world gathered in Lima 19th – 22nd October 2014 for the annual meeting of the International Forum for Volunteering in Development (Forum). Forum is a global network of organisations involved in international volunteering, working in collaboration with national and local volunteer organisations to promote the recognition of volunteerism for development.

The Lima Declaration, created at the meeting, recognises that Sustainable Development is not possible without volunteers. At its heart, volunteerism is based on people working together to contribute to just and peaceful change in communities across the globe. The act of contributing out of one’s own free will, for broader societal benefit, is fundamental to our humanity and to the creation of an equitable and peaceful world.

The declaration is a statement of our agreed priorities and messages as international volunteering cooperation organisations for the Post-2015 Development Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and a commitment to take action to ensure that volunteers’ priorities are reflected in the new development framework and the SDGs.

International volunteer and cooperation organisations and volunteer involving organisations are invited to sign up to the document – we are working to gather as many signatories as possible by the 5th December, 2014. The document – along with the list of signatories – will be sent to central multilateral institutions and used in advocacy efforts at both the international and national level. It will also be shared again with all the signatories so that they may use it for their information and advocacy work.

We are pleased to share with you the Lima Declaration in English, French and Spanish, and hope that your organisation would join the organisations who have already signed up. If so, please send a confirmation about this as soon as possible to Forum’s Coordinator, Adjmal Dulloo: adjmal.dulloo [at] forum-ids.org.